Institutional crisis in the PLRA because of the Convention

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By Ed­uardo Nakayama*

Last Sun­day, Au­gust 6, 2023, the Ex­tra­or­di­nary Con­ven­tion of the PLRA was held, in which six points were to be con­sid­ered in the agenda. How­ever, a ma­jor­ity of Con­ven­tion mem­bers went fur­ther and re­solved, when the Con­ven­tion was al­ready ad­journed, the re­moval of Efraín Ale­gre as pres­i­dent of the PLRA, gen­er­at­ing a po­lit­i­cal and le­gal cri­sis within the party, and also in the na­tional po­lit­i­cal spec­trum due to the ac­cu­sa­tion of ex­ter­nal in­ter­fer­ence by el­e­ments re­lated to the rul­ing party.

Since the end of the April 30 elec­tions, my pub­lic po­si­tion has been to redi­rect the Lib­eral Party to­wards the fu­ture, re­turn­ing to the roots of lib­er­al­ism, urg­ing Pres­i­dent Efraín Ale­gre to step aside in the party lead­er­ship and fa­cil­i­tate a process of gen­er­a­tional change that al­lows the re­newal of the ranks, es­pe­cially in terms of emerg­ing lead­er­ship, over­shad­owed in re­cent decades by ster­ile clashes be­tween in­ter­nal fac­tions. How­ever, the main move­ments con­tin­ued with their rad­i­cal­ized po­si­tions, forc­ing an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Con­ven­tion which, from the be­gin­ning, looked more like an­other chap­ter in the long dis­pute be­tween the fol­low­ers of Efraín Ale­gre and Blas Llano. Both sec­tors had pro­pos­als not in ac­cor­dance with the By­laws, the laws or the Na­tional Con­sti­tu­tion: the for­mer pro­posed a call for elec­tions and the lat­ter, the re­moval of the Pres­i­dent from of­fice, when such item was not in­cluded in the Agenda and, even if it were in­cluded, it was not within the com­pe­tence of the Con­ven­tion to do so, since the By­laws fore­see that the Party Elec­toral Tri­bunal (Arts. 94-97) is the body in charge of such a mat­ter.

Fol­low­ing our pur­pose of find­ing a mid­dle ground be­tween the op­pos­ing par­ties, a group of lib­eral leg­is­la­tors pre­sented a vi­able pro­posal, ad­justed to the Party By­laws and to the pre­rog­a­tives that an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Con­ven­tion has to “take the res­o­lu­tions it con­sid­ers con­ve­nient for the best di­rec­tion of the party and the achieve­ment of its goals” (Art. 31, inc. C), to in­te­grate the Po­lit­i­cal Com­mit­tee, the gov­ern­ing body of the PLRA (Art. 14), adding the leg­is­la­tors to an En­larged Board of Di­rec­tors to lead the Party to­wards an in­sti­tu­tional so­lu­tion, which in­stead of weak­en­ing it, strength­ens it in the face of the new chal­lenges ahead.

We are in the midst of a chaos that harms the entire opposition and facilitates the takeover of the State by cartism and, what is worse, could cause a new fracture of liberalism in two or three parts, as it happened in 1977. We cannot allow history to repeat itself or the PLRA to surrender to foreign interests, to be controlled or co-opted, as it was in other times

The con­tro­ver­sial Ex­tra­or­di­nary Con­ven­tion, called at the re­quest of some mem­bers of the Co­or­di­nadora de In­ten­dentes Lib­erales, be­gan with nu­mer­ous in­ci­dents, rang­ing from the lack of agree­ment on the venue to be held, to the points to be dealt with in the Agenda, for­get­ting in ad­di­tion what is es­tab­lished in Art. 25 of the By­laws which ex­pressly states that “in no case may the Ex­tra­or­di­nary Na­tional Con­ven­tion deal with mis­cel­la­neous mat­ters”, while the pro­posal sub­mit­ted by Gov­er­nor Ri­cardo Es­ti­gar­ribia in­cluded a NEW TEXT which, for the first time, ex­pressly men­tioned a re­quest for the re­moval of the Pres­i­dent, which suf­fered from a dou­ble in­sur­mount­able flaw: on the one hand it in­tended to add an item not in­cluded in the Agenda and on the other hand, re­quest­ing a sanc­tion (re­moval from a party elec­tive of­fice, ap­peal­ing to Art. 97, para­graph B), whose even­tual ap­pli­ca­tion cor­re­sponds, af­ter the re­spec­tive process has been sub­stan­ti­ated, to the Con­duct Tri­bunal and never to an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Na­tional Con­ven­tion, which in any case could deal with the ex­pul­sion (not re­moval from of­fice), in sole in­stance, if the fact had been in­cluded in the Agenda.

My po­lit­i­cal dif­fer­ences with the efrain­ismo are no­to­ri­ous and pub­lic. At the time, I strongly ques­tioned the de­ci­sion of said sec­tor to se­lec­tively re­move mem­bers of the Board of Di­rec­tors who re­sponded to llanismo on May 20, 2020. There­fore, my po­si­tion in the case of the Ex­tra­or­di­nary Con­ven­tion is not some­thing per­sonal nor does it mean to be in fa­vor of any of the ri­val par­ties in the party. My po­si­tion is only on the side of le­gal­ity, of what to the best of my knowl­edge, as a man of law, I in­ter­pret as valid or in­valid. I am in fa­vor of re­spect for le­gal­ity and party in­sti­tu­tion­al­ism, prin­ci­ples that are vec­tors of lib­er­al­ism and that all de­mo­c­ra­tic par­ties must ob­serve.

Ex­cept for an Im­peach­ment Trial, a fig­ure reg­u­lated in the Na­tional Con­sti­tu­tion but nonex­is­tent (by de­fault) in our By­laws, no process from which a sanc­tion or penalty may de­rive may be ap­plied out­side the pro­vi­sions of Art. 17 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which guar­an­tees the pro­ce­dural rights of cit­i­zens. No ma­jor­ity, even if it is qual­i­fied or with unan­i­mous vote, can, for ex­am­ple, de­cree the death penalty of an in­di­vid­ual in con­tra­ven­tion of the pro­vi­sions of Art. 4 of the Na­tional Con­sti­tu­tion. There­fore, the ma­jor­ity that has voted in an ir­reg­u­lar man­ner in a Con­ven­tion al­ready ad­journed by the pres­i­dent of the same, is dou­bly in­valid due to the in­sur­mount­able vices ex­pressed above, since with the same cri­te­ria of those who con­tin­ued it, we could think that an Ex­tra­or­di­nary Con­ven­tion could “sep­a­rate” all the mem­bers of the Board of Di­rec­tors and re­place them with al­ter­nates, or the en­tire board of di­rec­tors, or 51% of the Con­ven­tion mem­bers could “sep­a­rate” the re­main­ing 49% and re­place them with al­ter­nates. It is un­ten­able to dis­re­gard the prin­ci­ple of sov­er­eignty ex­er­cised through the di­rect vote that elected the au­thor­i­ties.

Efraín Ale­gre has filed an ac­tion be­fore the Elec­toral Jus­tice de­nounc­ing the nul­lity of what was re­solved by those who re­mained at the end of the Ex­tra­or­di­nary Con­ven­tion. My po­si­tion is that Efraín Ale­gre con­tin­ues to be the le­git­i­mate pres­i­dent of the PLRA un­til such time as a firm and en­force­able sen­tence of the high­est ju­di­cial in­stance re­solves oth­er­wise.

To­day we have a de facto bi­cephalic sit­u­a­tion in the party lead­er­ship. This gen­er­ates un­nec­es­sary po­lit­i­cal and le­gal chaos, since this ir­re­spon­si­bil­ity may re­sult in a gen­er­al­ized set­back in the next mu­nic­i­pal elec­tions sched­uled for Sep­tem­ber, where the PLRA is run­ning can­di­dates in a dozen cities.

We are in the midst of a chaos that harms the en­tire op­po­si­tion and fa­cil­i­tates the takeover of the State by car­tism and, what is worse, could cause a new frac­ture of lib­er­al­ism in two or three parts, as it hap­pened in 1977. We can­not al­low his­tory to re­peat it­self or the PLRA to sur­ren­der to for­eign in­ter­ests, to be con­trolled or co-opted, as it was in other times. Now it is up to us to re­sist by seek­ing the preva­lence of the rule of law. No one can be above the his­toric Lib­eral Party, much less above the higher in­ter­ests of the Re­pub­lic of Paraguay.

*Ed­uardo Nakayama, Na­tional Sen­a­tor (PLRA) pe­riod 2023-2028. Lawyer (UNA, USAL) and his­to­rian (UPF).